The Unmodified Family: The Child Support Act and the Construction of Legal Subjects

Diduck, Alison

doi:10.2307/1410613

Cited by 13 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 12 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Following Elizabeth et al (2012: 426), I suggest that ‘as father contact becomes increasingly valorized, the importance attached to financial support is diminishing’. This, in combination with the authority traditionally attached to the male breadwinner (Kenney, 2006), positions fathers as policy and legal subjects who claim control over post-separation finances, choosing if and how money will be paid to former partners and children (Collier, 2009; Cook and Natalier, 2013; Diduck, 1995). This is masculine financial discretion (Diduck, 1995).…”

Section: The Welfare Mother and Masculine Financial Discretionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This, in combination with the authority traditionally attached to the male breadwinner (Kenney, 2006), positions fathers as policy and legal subjects who claim control over post-separation finances, choosing if and how money will be paid to former partners and children (Collier, 2009; Cook and Natalier, 2013; Diduck, 1995). This is masculine financial discretion (Diduck, 1995). Further, fathers’ rights groups in Australia, the UK and the USA argue that family law courts and post-separation processes are biased in favour of mothers’ fraudulent financial and custody claims (Collier, 2009; Gavanas, 2004; Graycar, 2008).…”

Section: The Welfare Mother and Masculine Financial Discretionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Micro-aggressions, single mothers and interactions with government workers: The case of Australia’s child support bureaucracy

Natalier

2017

Journal of Sociology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article analyses single mothers' experiences of Australia's child support bureaucracy, shifting the focus beyond problematic individual interactions to the discourses that shape them. Drawing on data from semi-structured interviews with 37 Australian single mothers, I argue that women's interactions with Department of Human Services-Child Support (DHS-CS) are expressions of gender-focused micro-aggressions. These are interactions that express and reinforce social hierarchies and power differentials in sometimes subtle and often taken-for-granted ways. I argue these interactions are structured by the dominant gendered welfare discourse that constitutes the welfare mother and legitimates masculine financial discretion. Thus, any attempt to address client concerns about the failings of DHS-CS, and by extension other government bureaucracies, must extend beyond 'training' and administrative processes, and engage with the more challenging strategies of socio-cultural change.

show abstract

Section: The Welfare Mother and Masculine Financial Discretionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: The Welfare Mother and Masculine Financial Discretionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Micro-aggressions, single mothers and interactions with government workers: The case of Australia’s child support bureaucracy

Natalier

2017

Journal of Sociology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Second, the state produces gendered subject positions through the ‘creation and regulation, construction and instruction’ of ‘proper’ masculinities and femininities (Brush, 2003: 52). This is implicit in the gendered construction of financially autonomous men and financially dependent women who typically occupy the positions of child support payers and recipients respectively (Diduck, 1995). We focus on how these processes were evident in how the key institution of the CSP – the Department of Human Services Child Support (DHSCS) – facilitated men’s discretion and demanded and constrained women’s child support provisioning.…”

Section: The Governance Of Gendermentioning

confidence: 99%

Single Mothers’ Post-Separation Provisioning: Child Support and the Governance of Gender

2018

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This article uses single mothers’ pursuit of child support (child maintenance) to examine how the state governs gender through post-separation financial responsibilities. We draw on interview data to detail how the Australian welfare state compels single mothers’ child support provisioning through claims work and the associated strategies of managing information, emotions and government workers. Despite their sustained efforts, provisioning afforded single mothers’ limited financial benefits. We argue that this outcome reflected a gendered policy and implementation regime that normalised masculine financial discretion and simultaneously compelled single mothers’ provisioning and failed to accord it legitimacy. Provisioning did, however, benefit the welfare state, which appropriated single mothers’ time and knowledge to claim and perform key functions. We conclude that the necessity and challenges of child support provisioning were not indicative of a failing child support programme but rather reflected its role in the reproduction of gendered power, responsibilities and rewards in post-separation parenting.

show abstract

“…The omission of lone black mothers in this instance still renders them pathological since it indicates they are not genuinely British. (Silva, 1996: 189) Linking state dependency with bad or lone motherhood suggests that an important part of badness and goodness is whether children are cared for (including paid for) within the privacy of the Family.1 It is mother's role to keep children out of both the state's pockets (usually by being connected to a man), and its regulatory gaze -'[t]he individual mother should have total responsibility for her own children at all times' (Kline in Fineman and Karpin, 1995: 120 quoting Wearing, 1984; and see Diduck, 1995). And so, these collections explore the way in which bad mothers also become those who request or require assistance from the state, and subject that process also to a race and class analysis.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…There is a long tradition of demonising motherhood outside of the Family (Diduck, 1995;Smart, 1992b;Spensky, 1992), and the ideology of the family has played a large part in notions of good and bad mothering (McIntosh in Silva, 1996;Boyd, 1996). Harrison (in Fineman and Karpin, 1995) further demonstrates the importance of family ideology on constructions of motherhood by identifying the difficulties lesbian mothers have in fitting into law's construction of good families and good mothers.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Review Essay : In Search of the Feminist Good Mother

Diduck

1998

Social & Legal Studies

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

to historically constructed images of mothers and the paradoxical limits yet pervasiveness of law as a medium for social and material change. Women have had to respond to an agenda that was not set by us and work within a framework we played no part in building, or as Carol Smart has said '[u]nfortunately, very few policy questions are conceptualised in feminist terms and yet feminists still have to respond to them' (Smart, 1984: 224). So, maternal and 'cultural' feminists have sought to protect and find a place in law for the 'special' connection women have with motherhood, while liberal and radical feminists have sought to decentre that very relationship in women's lives. Recently, however, this artificial (and anti-feminist) divide has broken down, and studies of motherhood and mothering have begun to understand differently the parts played in law by both conceptions, as well as the part played by law in constituting them.

show abstract

The Unmodified Family: The Child Support Act and the Construction of Legal Subjects

Cited by 13 publications

References 12 publications

Micro-aggressions, single mothers and interactions with government workers: The case of Australia’s child support bureaucracy

Micro-aggressions, single mothers and interactions with government workers: The case of Australia’s child support bureaucracy

Single Mothers’ Post-Separation Provisioning: Child Support and the Governance of Gender

Review Essay : In Search of the Feminist Good Mother

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About